During fabrication of high moment magnetic writer head, chemical vapor deposited (CVD) Ru films have commonly been used as seed layers for the electroplating of high moment magnetic writer materials, such as CoFe. So that the CVD Ru films smoothly and conformally deposit on their target substrates, a seed layer is often deposited prior to the CVD Ru deposition. At present, the CVD Ru seed used for 550 Gb/in2 and 750 Gb/in2 magnetic recording medium products (hereafter, referred to as “products”) is either physical vapor deposited (PVD) Ta/Ru bilayers or Ta/TaOx/Ru triple layers.
Unfortunately, due to line-of-sight deposition characteristics of the PVD technique, conformality of the PVD seeds is usually poor. This can be particularly problematic for certain 920 Gb/in2 product that have a multiple sidewall angle structure and, as such, provide improved writeability over single sidewall writers. Due to the multiple sidewall angles and smaller track width, the aspect ratio of writer trenches resulting from a multiple sidewall angle structure is higher than other products. Accordingly, to achieve the desired writer performance, all the side gap materials which are deposited into the writer trenches should be very conformal.